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PHILLIPSBURG, St. Maarten
October 13, 2022. The home crowd screamed,
stomped and pounded the stands as they spurred
their team (St. Maarten) on to victory in a
close 5 setter against Anguilla at the ECVA
Senior Women’s Championship.
It was a second 5 set
match of the night and the partisan home crowd
did not move until victory was achieved after
two and a half hours. In this case the scores
(24-26, 25-20, 29-27, 27-25, 15-12) was a true
reflection of the closeness of the game.
St. Maarten benefitted
from a heavy error count from their opponents
66, as well as dominating in kills 52 -24 and
leading in blocks 9 to 4. Anguilla on the other
hand had the better service game winning 17- 14
and they picked up 44 points from St. Maarten’s
errors.
St. Maarten had all round
contributions as four players chipped in with
double figure points. Middle blocker Natalie
Johnson led with 17, outside hitter Angela
Abente had 15, while the captain Akilah Meulens
playing opposite contributed 14 alongside
outside hitter Geraldo James who also offered 14
points.
Anguilla’s point leaders
were Rikiesha Leveret with 15 points (including
with 9 service aces and 6 kills) and Janai Gumbs
with 11 points but all in a losing cause.
Dimitri Beauperthuy Coach
of St. Maarten was relieved. “Anguilla played a
spectacular game, their service, particularly
from their captain Leveret gave us a lot of
problems and correspondingly our service was
poor and caused us to shoot ourselves in the
foot. Fortunately, we came out on the winning
side mainly because some younger players stepped
up and filled the void when needed most” he
said.
Omari Hamilton Coach of
Anguilla was a loss for words. “We really wanted
to win this game, but they came out on top of a
very close game, the closest I have experienced
so far. There were some small adjustments
needed that we missed that could have made a
difference, but we can only fix those for the
future and continue to play hard”, he surmised.
Captain was in tears.
“This is a team we really wanted to defeat since
they defeated us the last time we met.
Unfortunately, they won this time, but we will
come back stronger”, she promised.
Matches continue with the
Grenada meeting St. Marteen with an
all-important clash in pool play to determine
final positions.
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